University Times

In an increasingly service-based world economy, employers are seeking T-shaped students.

According to Science 2009 speaker Dianne Fodell, “We need students to be deep in one or more subjects, but broad across many.”

Fodell, director of IBM’s global university programs, spoke here Oct. 15 on “Service Science — Universities Collaborating on Essential New Skills and Research.”

IBM has been working with universities around the world on the emerging academic discipline known as service science, management and engineering (SSME), which draws on business, technology and social sciences.

“Universities are important to IBM because we hire from universities, but also our clients hire from the universities,” Fodell said. “Our clients will not be able to find the skills that they need to use the technologies that we want them to have if the universities don’t turn out [students with] the skills.”

For instance, to serve a client IBM may need to have employees at several of the customer’s sites — with perhaps some workers in America, others in Singapore or India.

“We have to understand how to apply people to those jobs who have the right skills. But we also have to know the cultures if we are managing the people who are in these different cultures. We have to understand not just what the industry can tolerate, but what the country and global culture is like,” she said. Having an appreciation of how cultures differ is important in a globally integrated business, she said. “We need this triple combination of skills. It’s hard to find.”

Graduates need an understanding of people and culture in addition to business and technology. “These are typically taught in three different colleges within a university,” she said.

Some change is occurring. In many institutions, “the faculty are walking across the halls in business and technology schools, but the social sciences are still left out in a lot of universities,” she said.

Because the world economy is moving away quickly from agriculture and goods-based economies to more service-based economies, the people side of the equation is critical. “Almost every service business has a face-to face component,” she said. Still, most universities teach in the context of products and manufacturing: supply chains, product development, product innovation.

Given that service businesses are very different from product businesses, new scientific methods need to be developed to make service-based businesses more sustainable, repeatable, profitable and not just one-time service engagements.

Whereas supply chain and inventory management are very important in product-based businesses, expectations and demand play a large role in service management and service science.

Service-based businesses that manage customer demand and expectations well, striving to provide consistent customer experiences, tend to do well, she said, citing Marriott and McDonalds as examples.

Among the events at Science 2009 were four plenary sessions, including, above, Michael Graetzel of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, who gave the Provost Lecture on “Light and Energy, Mesoscopic Systems for Solar Power Conversion and Storage.” Cori Bargmann, Rockefeller University, gave the Mellon Lecture on “Fifty Years of Solitude: A Circuit for Social Behavior in C. elegans.” Bruce Beutler, The Scripps Research Institute, gave the Klaus Hofmann Lecture on “How Do We Sense Infections? Toll-like Receptors and the Genetic Analysis of Innate Immunity.”

Most product-based businesses tackle innovation via an inside-out approach: analyzing core competencies to determine what they can make and sell. But companies focused on an outside-in approach — uncovering customers’ needs through ethnographic studies and empathetic studies, then building a business model around delivering the desired service — may have more successful innovations.

An example of a service-based business focused on the customer experience is the American Girl dolls. The business includes special stores and events, such as tea parties, to which customers bring their dolls.

“It’s very expensive, but it’s all about the experience,” Fodell said.

However, in another sort of service business, such as public services where cost as well as customer experience matter, customer input is key for balancing cost and experience.

“Instead of cutting all the fat, you have to allow the customer to judge what they want to pay for and what they want to throw away.”

IBM is among many employers concerned about getting students into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, Fodell said. “STEM can’t just be looked at as the four subjects; they really need to be looked at in context of the real world and real problems and real projects.” A recent report found that students who participate in challenge-based learning that includes real-world projects and problems tend to learn much faster and were more likely to continue in their programs, she said.

“University students love putting a real-world context with service science,” she said. One example is student interest in helping the environment — fertile ground for such problem-based learning.

While IBM doesn’t write curricula, “we can share real-world problems, industry trends, knowledge we have from clients,” Fodell said, adding that IBM offers service science teaching materials such as client case studies free at www.ibm.com/university/ssme.

Victor Ambros, at right, of the University of Massachusetts medical school, delivered the Dickson Prize in Medicine Lecture. He spoke on “MicroRNAs, From Model Organisms to Human Biology.”

Teaching service science requires different technologies. “You don’t have a CAD/CAM system in a service science lab. You don’t have a manufacturing floor environment,” Fodell said.

Instead, the service science lab must facilitate collaborative ways to design, simulate, rehearse and test complex service systems.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life can provide a testing ground to simulate business systems and models. IBM also has a free business process modeling “serious game” called Innov8, in which students must come up with the right combination of business performance indicators to create a successful business.

Face-to-face encounters can supplement virtual worlds. IBM recently facilitated “telepresence” videoconferencing sessions in which participants from 14 university locations across the globe interacted. The topic: discussing what service systems design labs should look like.

“It was so lifelike we were almost handing books across the table to each other,” she said.

“The faculty loved it. They thought it was a great way to get together without hopping on an airplane and going to a summit meeting. Of course, it’s greener and an alternative to travel.”

Fodell encourages universities to embrace telepresence, a tool made easier because many — including Pitt — already are connected to the National LambdaRail network infrastructure that enables high bandwidth systems.

The technology is useful for distance learning, faculty advising, presentation of theses and other projects, Fodell said. The most plentiful applications — which also may be the most needed in university-affiliated medical centers — may be in health care delivery through telemedicine.

A service systems design lab has been built at San Jose State University. “The objectives were to have an environment in which students could collaborate, have the right technologies, be able to simulate systems and service systems and support social networking,” Fodell said.

The room is arranged in seven working group clusters, each with one wide screen monitor to encourage collaboration. Students do their own work in a different place on their own computers, but in the lab they work together. Walls separating the clusters don’t reach the ceiling, facilitating interaction. And there is one large screen in the room to allow the professor to show something to all the groups at once. “The room is very active and very busy and there are real-world projects they’re working on,” Fodell said.

Getting buy-in from faculty for the shift in paradigms isn’t difficult, Fodell said. “Universities are very siloed — we don’t see the inside organization changing too much, but the service science message is an easy sell to faculty. Faculty get it, faculty agree with it and a lot of faculty are working parts of service science into their existing curriculums.”

Most service science is developing at the graduate level where it is easier to add programs or make changes. For those in undergraduate programs where there is no room to add to the curriculum, “You can teach in the context around services; you can teach with service projects; you can teach with examples of services businesses and case studies, and this whole challenge facing project-based concepts,” Fodell said.

“It’s an easy sell, but it takes awhile and it takes a mindset.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow